


the word i can't quite conjure

by younglegends



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 22:52:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16168463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/younglegends/pseuds/younglegends
Summary: There’s a magician on the corner of the street.Or: a wrong place and time.





	the word i can't quite conjure

_...I'd wish to burn_    
_your name from the tip_    
_of my tongue, where it's lived_    
_for years now, the word_    
_I can't quite conjure, or_    
_there isn't one..._

 

There’s a magician on the corner of the street. Pulling exotic birds out from his sleeve and handing them out to children like balloons. They fly back to him, of course; settle onto his shoulders in a flurry of affronted wings, and he laughs, tickles under their chins as passers-by drop coins into his hat.

Juno walks past him. Gets ten paces down the road before walking straight on back.

“Your pigeon’s attacking my hair,” Juno says.

The magician gasps. “Oh, Achilles isn’t a  _pigeon_ —he’s a wire-tailed swallow, and a magnificent one at that!”

“Your wire-tailed swallow’s attacking my hair,” Juno says.

“Terribly sorry about that,” the magician says, not sounding very sorry at all. “Achilles, please. You know better than to go home with strangers. Where have your manners gone?”

The swallow pecks Juno’s ear. Does not move from his perch on his head.

“Oh, all right,” the magician says. “You look quite dashing today, Achilles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen your feathers so sleek.”

The swallow chirps. Flies onto the magician’s outstretched arm and preens.

“There you are,” the magician says, stroking the swallow’s white throat, and then he and Juno both remember that Juno’s still standing there at the exact same time. An unfurling of black coat and collar; a straightening of the spine. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Officer?”

His voice is pleasant, if cool. Juno eyes the small flock of birds gathered on his shoulders. The expectant jut of his chin.

“No,” Juno says. “Nothing at all.”

When he gets back to his apartment, he finds a single black feather stuck to his uniform coat, pinned to his lapel like a badge. He lays it on his desk, next to his gun.

 

 

The next day he doesn’t even make it five steps.

“You have _got_ to do something about this,” Juno says. He waves a hand at the swallow attempting to nest in his hair.

“Do I,” the magician says. The perfect arch of his raised eyebrow. “Since when was being a bird a crime?”

“He’s  _yours,_ ” Juno says, flapping a hand in the air, feeling ridiculously helpless about the whole thing. “Surely you’ve got to be responsible for him.”

“I didn’t realize he was threatening the sanctity of civilian life in Hyperion City,” the magician says primly, and then: “It’s quite a high compliment he’s paid you, you know. Achilles doesn’t roost on just anyone.”

“Great,” Juno says. “I'm touched. Literally.” 

“Of course, there’s no accounting for taste.”

“What’s that supposed to mean.”

“Come on, Achilles.” The magician holds out his hand. Achilles squawks, returns to him.

“You know,” Juno says, brushing stray feathers from his shoulders. “This is a pretty slow place to set up shop. The neighbourhood’s all rich folks, anyway; they’ve got standards. Might even call the cops on you. You’re better off at one of the busier intersections during rush hour.”

“I don’t tell you how to do _your_ job, do I, Officer.”

“No,” Juno admits, “though something tells me you’d like to.”

The magician smiles. The cut of it so sharp and violent across his face that Juno is almost taken aback.

“With investigative skills like that, it's no wonder they hired you,” the magician says. Suddenly he leans in close. “Would you like to see a trick, Officer?”

"Uh," Juno says, resisting the urge to draw back, away.

“Here,” the magician says, breath warm against Juno’s face, and reaches forward, plucks a rose from behind Juno’s ear. “From a gentleman to a lady.”

“Thanks,” Juno says, “but roses aren’t really my thing.”

“A shame.” The magician tuts. His teeth really are quite sharp. “Was there anything else you needed, Officer?”

Juno shakes his head at him and leaves.

Later that night he finds the rose in his pocket, when he pricks his fingers looking for a pen. It goes next to the feather on his desk.

 

 

The next day Juno’s up to his neck in a shootout that leaves one dead and six wounded, including himself. By the time all the paperwork is wrapped up it’s edging close to midnight. He checks himself out of the hospital and hails a cab home.

The window is open, there are feathers strewn everywhere, and an all-too-familiar bird is pecking at his pillowcase.

“Unbelievable,” Juno says.

It takes him the better part of an hour to purchase a cage, lure the bird into said cage, and find the usual spot on the street. Except the magician isn’t there. Juno doesn’t know why he expected him to be there. It’s the middle of the night. He’s probably fast asleep at home, dreaming of birds, stars, faraway places, whatever it is magicians dream of.

Juno returns home with the bird, because there’s nowhere else to go.

“Stupid bird,” Juno says.

The bird chirps.

“I’m not calling you  _Achilles,_ that’s a stupid name.”

_Chirp._

“And stop your goddamned chirping, it’s the middle of the night.”

_Chirp._

He opens the cage door eventually. Lets the bird hop around his too-small apartment room, squawking every now and then in disdain at his mess. In the morning he blinks open his eyes to find that he’s fallen asleep over his papers at his desk, neck stiff and ribs sore. The swallow is perched on his windowsill. Cocks his head at him, and starts to sing.

 

 

“Well, well, well,” the magician says. A blackbird on his shoulder. “I hadn’t realized you’d taken such a shine to dear Achilles here, but surely bird burglary is below an officer of the law such as yourself.”

“Birdlary,” Juno says before his brain can stop him.

The magician stares at him.

“I didn’t  _steal_ him, he came to  _me,_ ” Juno says, bulldozing straight on through. “Anyway, here. Take him back.” He opens the cage. Achilles flies around Juno’s head twice before coming to rest on the magician’s other shoulder.

“Achilles,” the magician says. “Bad bird.”

Achilles chirps, as though pleased with himself.

It’s late evening, the crowd thinning around them on the street. The magician hadn’t been there early in the morning, either, so Juno had had to take the cage with him to work. No one in the HCPD office had taken it well.

“Why the hell do you have a bird, Steel,” one of the captains’d barked at him.

“He’s a wire-tailed swallow,” Juno said, and wondered if he was going crazy.

Now Juno shuts the cage door, suddenly unsure of what to do with his hands. “Right,” he says, straightening up. “That’s all, then.”

“Ah.” The magician is eyeing him up and down. “You’re hurt.”

“What?” The bandage presses at Juno’s ribs. He’d almost forgotten it, himself. How had he been able to tell— “Just a graze. Comes with the line of work.”

The magician sniffs. “I can imagine.”

“Hey, how are you in a place to judge,” Juno says, gesturing at his getup. “Is there even any money in that?”

The magician flips a coin seemingly from nowhere. “More than you’d think,” he says, but Juno’s a bit caught up in watching the twinkle of the coin in the air, the rise and the fall, and when it disappears back into the magician’s palm he blinks. Looks up to see the magician watching him closely.

“Hmm,” the magician says. Poised on the edge of some revelation, perhaps—but no. “Officer. Is there anything else you need from me?”

Juno still holding onto an empty cage. His ribs burn with ache.

“That’s all,” he says, and leaves.

He finds the coin in his sleeve. Pressed into the seam like a precious, well-loved thing. He keeps it, for luck.

 

 

Another day, another chase. “HCPD,” Juno’s yelling over the rush and roar of the evening crowd, “ _freeze,_ ” but no one bats an eye, not in this city. The armed robber making his getaway past the glassy storefronts and high-rises and—a street corner, knocking past a familiar shadow, sending him stumbling—oh  _shit_ —

A bird flies into the robber’s hair. He lets out a yelp, arms waving furiously in the air. Juno raises his gun, and the crowd parts for him like a sea, lining up his shot. Set to stun. Even the wind seems to hold its breath as Juno fires, the laser cutting straight through the air into the small of the perp’s back. He drops to the ground like a stone.

“HCPD,” Juno says once more for good measure, bending down to one knee as he untangles his handcuffs from his belt, “you’re under arrest.”

Birds landing around them like snow. The heavy weight of the magician’s gaze, from a distance.

Later, after the robber’s been whisked away in a police car, sirens flashing through the night, Juno dusts himself off, secures his gun back into its holster. “He wasn’t hurt, was he?”

“Who?” The magician doesn’t look at him, fussing over one of his jackdaws. “Oh, Achilles? He’s fine, the little rascal. Fancies himself a bit of a hero, doesn’t he? Swooping in to save the day? Not unlike you, might I add.”

“What?” Juno prods gingerly at his ribs. The magician catches the movement, and narrows his eyes. Juno drops his hand. It shouldn’t feel like revealing a weakness, but... “Like I said. It’s the line of work.”

“Right,” the magician says. “The work.” He casts his eyes to the heavens. Looks entirely displeased for some reason Juno can’t fathom. “You sure know how to pick them,” he says, not to Juno but to the swallow nestled in the crook of his elbow.

A thought comes to Juno, then. “ _You’re_ not hurt, are you?”

“Me?” the magician says, delicately. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Alright, Juno thinks, fine, that’s it, then, and he’s turning to leave, shoulders hunched and hands returning to his pockets, except—the magician unravels, again, another slow elongation of his body, lines straightening themselves out. The uncrossing of his arms, the forward tilt of his shoulders. City flickering around them like a hologram.

“Officer,” the magician says, almost a sigh. “Would you be so kind as to allow me to buy you a drink?”

The birds watching him as one, eyes gleaming in the dark.

 

 

Even in the dinginess of the pub the magician looks every inch his part, sweeping and mysterious in his black coat and hat. But there’s something off to his charm, Juno thinks, watching him order a drink both overly fruity and potent. Something not so refined as the rest of him. A callousness Juno isn’t sure he likes the look of; an emptiness behind the eyes. But the way he had handled the birds—graceful fingers, hands capable of care—

“A penny for your thoughts, Officer,” the magician says. He tips his head back as he drinks. When he resurfaces, he licks his reddened lips. Catches Juno watching the bared curve of his throat, and smiles.

“You don’t have to keep calling me Officer,” Juno says, nursing his own glass. “I’m off duty. The name’s Juno Steel.”

“An interesting name. One I don’t think I’ll soon forget. How long have you been on the force?”

“Half a year.” His uniform still doesn’t quite fit right. “How long have you been a magician?”

“Oh, a very long time,” the magician says airily. “Since I was a child. And how long have you wanted to be a police officer?”

Toy guns and action figures in his fist. Sirens. A banging on the door. “Long enough,” Juno says. Returns the fire. “How long have you wanted to be a magician?”

“Too long.” The magician does something funny with his hands, then; Juno’s two drinks in, by now, can’t quite capture the movement. A flick of his wrist, and he’s emerging with a playing card. The jack of spades.

“Neat trick,” Juno says, muffled over the rim of his glass. “How’d you do it?”

The magician holds the card between two fingers. Points it at Juno like a gun. “A magician never reveals his secrets. You should know better than to ask.”

“Right,” Juno says. “How big are your sleeves, anyway? Or is it your pockets? They hold everything in there?”

The magician smiles, as though at an old private joke. Palms the playing card, and it disappears once more.

“I have a great many more hiding places than that,” he says, with an air of self-importance, and it sounds like such a bad pickup line Juno snorts into his glass.

“Still,” Juno says. “Odd sort of job, isn’t it?”

The magician hums. “I get by. It takes me all sorts of places. Across the universe.”

Juno tries to imagine it. Fails. He doesn’t particularly see the point—uprooting oneself, scattered among the stars. There’s nowhere to find solid footing, let alone to land. “Sounds exciting,” he says instead. “Why would you come here?”

“Here?” A glint of teeth. “What’s wrong with here? It  _is_ your home, is it not?”

Home. A word with too much gravity for a night like this, for the alcohol loosening his limbs, drawing him down. “It’s something, all right,” Juno mutters. A flash of memory sliding into his mind—an old cartoon, a mighty beast to be slayed, brought down to its knees. This city doesn't work like that; keeps getting back up again. It’s early days yet on the force, but Juno can already see the rest of it line up into place before him, like coins lighting up a slot machine. A future half-imagined as a child—exciting, perhaps; certainly meaningful. Guns shooting lasers, aim always landing true, cuts made quick and clean. The old adage, or commercial jingle, Juno can’t quite remember which:  _the good guy always wins_ —

“We make quite a funny pair, don’t we,” the magician says. A seeming non sequitur, but Juno considers it. Him in his cloak, sleeves full of tricks. Juno in his uniform feeling awfully confined. A shared silence in the corner of a bar. He finishes his drink, calls for another. Over the countertop the magician’s eyes glimmer with a sheen of anticipation. Shifts minutely closer, knees brushing against Juno’s and not pulling away.

Intention reads like a warning sign, even at this hour of night. Eclipsed by the dimness of the pub, through the haze of alcohol, he seems hardly more than a mirage. One blink and he’s made double, lit and shadowed by the neon glow in equal measure. But Juno’s always been quick on the draw. Lets him slide his knee forward, knocking Juno’s legs apart, and curl a hand over his thigh. Careful, Juno has enough presence of mind to think; these are hands that have conjured and vanished countless things, that have both given and taken away. Then the flutter of breath upon his cheek, close as a shave.

“What say you we get out of here, Officer,” the magician says into his ear, his smile a promise against Juno’s upturned face.

Outside, the night beat-up and bruised into darkness. Ready to be peeled back like another layer of skin, raw and tender for the next round. It’s only a short walk back to Juno’s apartment, but the city seems to last forever in this light, all its familiar angles and corners coloured in new shades: the steady footsteps keeping pace with Juno’s own, the magician’s face cut into brief glimpses under yellowed shards from the streetlamps, his remarks upon the architecture of buildings they walk past, crowded together like the shoulders of strangers. “It’s all rather stifling,” he says, “don’t you think,” and Juno mutters “yeah, yeah,” breathless for a different reason he can’t quite name. Birds perched on telephone wires, peering down at them through the dark.

“This is me,” Juno says at last, coming to his door, and he gets it halfway open before the magician is upon him. They stumble into the room together, a desperation to the way he presses Juno into the wall, hands fisting in Juno’s collar. He’d always held himself back as though restrained by a fine line, one breaking down at last, and there is a bright taste of thrill in the back of Juno’s throat—that he’d been the one to do it.

When the magician has Juno’s shirt unbuttoned he pauses. Runs his palm over the bandages on his chest, over his heart. Hands with the power to reveal and return lost things to this world, and yet held unbearably gentle as he watches Juno with half-slitted eyes through the dark as though Juno is some intricate curiosity, some puzzle to be solved, when the lines of Juno’s body all ache in one direction, every part of him waiting to be touched.

“Are you going to kiss me or not,” Juno rasps, and the magician lets out a low laugh, closes the distance. He tastes like what he’d been drinking—lemons. Hunger, mostly; the hint of teeth scraping Juno’s lower lip. Their mouths meeting in the crack of light through the door.

In the morning he wakes to an empty bed. Next to the feather and the rose and the coin on his desk, there lies a playing card. Juno thumbs it absently. The sharp, sour tang of lemon in his mouth. He never had told him his name.

 

 

An alarm is tripped in an upper-class neighbourhood, all sleek apartments rising from the ground like statues. A familiar street by now, though the corner is vacant this afternoon, not that Juno had looked. He’s hurtling his way through the halls, gun drawn, his partner outpaced behind him, shouting for him to wait for backup. Some lady in hysterics about the precious gem stolen from her safe. They’ve really got to find some better hiding places, Juno’s thinking, no more of this predictable behind-the-painting bullshit, and he turns the corner, catches a glimpse. A shadow halfway out the window.

“Freeze,” Juno says on autopilot, even as the picture is falling into place all around him. Even hanging out of a window, he cuts an elegant figure, dressed all in black. The moment of recognition quick between them like lightning. There’s a flash of something, then; not shock or even resignation, but a challenge, a dare. Slight tilt of the head, the way one would tip their hat after a particularly fine trick: voilà. Here it is. Here we are.

Juno blinks. Fires. But there’s still the aftertaste of lemon in his mouth, and his shot flies astray, buries itself into the wall. A flurry of movement on the fire escape; the disappearing act out the window. Not down, Juno notes, but up.

“Did you get him,” his partner wheezes, crashing through the hallway.

“I missed.”

“What? You never miss—”

“I missed,” Juno says, and he bangs open the door to the stairwell, starts climbing.

He follows him over the rooftops. He lets him, he’s sure of it; never quite disappearing out of sight, always just ahead, kept in the periphery of his eye. Eventually the chase comes to an end, as it must. The magician standing quite close to the edge, hands in his pockets, surveying the skyline of the city like he’s planning to become another part of it.

“You’re not a real magician,” Juno says over the wind.

“Stating the obvious again, I see, Officer,” the magician—the man—the stranger says. “Magic isn’t real. Hasn’t anyone ever taught you that?”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

A smile. Something about it stretched awfully thin. “Isn’t it.”

Juno’s mind is spinning from all the things he wants to say. He lands on one like a misplaced playing card, fallen out of the shuffle of a deck.

“Jack of spades,” he says. “The thief.”

The magician’s smile widens. He spreads out his fingers: ta-da.

“Why me, then,” Juno says, still trying to work it out, the trick in the trapdoor. “You went through all that trouble—I didn’t even give anything up. What did you take from me?”

“Oh, Juno,” the magician says. “A magician never reveals his secrets, remember? You should know better than to ask.”

Juno grits his teeth. He can’t help feeling used, but he doesn’t see how, which makes it even worse. “Oh, come on. What was it—police routes, security codes, a distraction—”

The magician is still.

“An illusion,” he says, at last. “That was all. Are you going to arrest me for it, Officer?”

There’s nothing antagonistic or even bitter in his tone. Just a curious blankness. Looking at Juno like a man already lost.

But there’d been a moment—Juno’s sure of it. A fragile one, the wind rushing past them over the rooftops. Hands hovering. To conjure, Juno remembers, or to vanish. To hold on or to let go.  

“Why,” Juno says, and something ruffles over the magician’s face. At this distance Juno can’t tell what it is—a smirk, or a sadness—

“Whyever else,” the magician says. He bends low to the ground, and Juno tightens his grip on his gun, only to see for the first time the row of cages lining the rooftop. There'd been purpose to this destination; in fact only now is Juno beginning to see that there had been purpose to every word, every gesture, every turn of his world—even Juno himself. He’s opening the latches with an almost savage efficiency, letting loose a storm of birds upon the city. Thrushes and starlings, finches and sparrows. One wire-tailed swallow pecks at his hand, circles their heads a few times as though unsure of himself, before he, too, flies off and away.

“To remind myself,” the magician says. Hair windswept, collar rumpled, and yet Juno cannot help but think that he has never seemed more smoothed out, more perfectly secured. Something irrevocably changed—a dismantling and a reconstruction all at once, gears and levers tumbling into place. In a sick lurch of realization Juno doubts that he had ever seen anything real to begin with. “What it takes to be free.”

He turns to Juno, then, and his face is a shutter drawn closed. “Was there anything else you wanted from me, Officer?”

Juno stares at the stranger standing across the rooftop. Raises his gun.

“No,” he says. “Nothing at all.”

But his hesitation lasts a heartbeat too long. His shot disappears somewhere into the sky as the shadow jumps over the side of the roof, and Juno remembers the arc of a coin tossed into the air, winking out like a light. By the time he gets to the edge, the magician is gone without a trace, as surely as though he had never been there at all. Leaving part of Juno in wonder, a remnant of childlike awe at the makings of a story before his very eyes, drawn together by mystery, cast into myth.

The rest of him knowing to mourn.

After the neverending grind of interrogation and excuses and  _what-do-you-mean-you-lost-him-you’re-losing-your-touch_ , Juno goes home. It’s exactly the way he’s left it, though he imagines doors cracked in, drawers turned loose and emptied. Only the window is open. The feather, the rose, the coin, and the playing card are all gone. Everything else has been left untouched.

None of them had belonged to him in the first place, so surely this can’t count as a theft. Only a reclaiming of what had been left behind. And anyway, there would have been no point in holding onto them, as keepsakes of just another person he couldn’t save. No reason to feel bereft. It’s better this way. He’s got to be impressed, even. The most thorough vanishing act he’s ever seen; bravo. Encore. Do it again.

Juno runs a hand over the surface of his desk, then clenches it into a fist.

After a while, he reaches into his drawer, and pops open a bottle of gin.

The night slowly bleeds out into morning. But the city, Juno finds, seems to have lost another layer of magic. He’s not sure where, exactly; the neon sheen of it at night, the haphazard rush of the crowds, the skies cleared of flight. The shadows are all just shadows. Eventually he stops looking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The call beeps out into static and Juno wastes only a moment to curse out an old friend, though only a moment is enough. Throws on his coat. Grabs his keys. Spins the right laser cards into his blaster. Up and over the sill, escape route laid out at his feet.

“Is there room for two in that window,” comes a voice smooth as glass. Outside, the call of the city, the scatter of birds' wings taking flight, and Juno turns away, turns around to face the future.

 

_...Or else_   
_you were only my first_    
_wish, which would mean_    
_I’ve still got two left, and I know_   
_what I want this time: to remember_   
_nothing. Then_    
_to have everything back._   
  
ALI SHAPIRO, LEAVING HOME

**Author's Note:**

> i actually finished this like 3 months ago idk why i'm only posting it now. basically i was just fascinated with the idea of a younger, rougher peter, his bitterness at betrayal not quite buried deeply enough, all his selves not yet made seamless into what they are now; and of a younger, more idealistic juno, not yet disillusioned enough with the world to let it pass him by, though still every bit as mired in his own self. and, of course, the hurt that could result from that.
> 
> there was really no reason to make peter moonlight as a magician except for the fact that, well, that's what thieves ARE! *drops mic*
> 
> anyway tfw suddenly all your favourite love poems can be applied to the shit you're writing... that's romance i guess!


End file.
